Recent Posts

My husband’s name is Braden. That’s what it says on his birth certificate, but everyone calls him Brady and has done so basically since he was born. One time, he asked his mom why they didn’t just name him Brady Read more…

Abbreviations are all over the place. We use them in text messages, emails, work meetings, and even normal, everyday conversations! They make our lives just a little bit easier and help us avoid unnecessary repetition. But sometimes we use abbreviations Read more…

Which is correct: “It happened like I said it would” or “It happened as I said it would”? What about these: “It tasted like garbage” or “It tasted as garbage”? If you picked the sentence with like in it both Read more…

Then and than are just one letter away from being the exact same word, but that one tiny letter makes a world of difference! Despite the words’ similarity in spelling, they have completely different definitions and are absolutely NOT interchangeable. Read more…

If you went to the grocery store with your roommate, would you say “He and I went” or “He and me went”? And if your friend graciously offered to drive you both, would you say “They drove him and I” Read more…

It might seem like English is a pretty well-established language, but new words are being made up all the time! If a new kind of technology is invented, its name needs to go in the dictionary. When new slang words Read more…

Most words have antonyms, which are “opposite” words. For example, the antonym of good is bad. An antonym of sad is happy. Then there are these super CONFUSING words called contronyms. These words are their OWN antonyms; they mean both Read more…

There are some English words that people absolutely HATE, like moist or fester. Other words sound very pretty—even magical—like effervescent. Then there are the very satisfying, perfectly symmetrical words that are so special, they get their own name: palindromes. What Read more…

Doesn’t that just title sum up English grammar? “Here’s a rule, but it’s not quite always true…” It’s an unfortunate reality that the rules of English grammar are very much like swiss cheese: full of holes (and possibly a little Read more…

The capitalization question strikes again. We’ve talked about how the “f” in french fries should be lowercase (even though French is usually capitalized in other contexts), but what about words like “mom” and “dad”? What about professional titles like “president”? Read more…

You probably know that you’re supposed to capitalize proper nouns, including the names of people, places, and organizations. So it goes without saying that the name of the country France should be capitalized. But what are the rules of capitalization Read more…

I’m not the only person who has favorite and least-favorite grammatical rules, right? For example, the Oxford comma is definitely up there as one of my favorites. Unfortunately, the rule we’re talking about right now—the suspended hyphen—is one of my Read more…

It might sometimes seem like people just toss hyphens randomly into their writing. And with so many different rules and various situations when you do or don’t need a hyphen (even for the same word!), it’s very possible that some Read more…

Babysit or baby-sit? Common sense or common-sense? First aid, first-aid, or firstaid? There are three different kinds of compound words—open, closed, and hyphenated—and it can be tricky to keep them all straight! Overview: What Is a Compound Word? A compound Read more…

If we only had short, simple sentences, our writing would be super boring to read. Every sentence would be like this. There would be no variation. Books would be absolutely unbearable. We would sound like robots. Luckily, we’re not restricted Read more…

There are four different sentence structures to choose from: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. Each has a different assortment of independent and dependent clauses, and using a variety of structures makes your writing more interesting to read! Let’s start off Read more…

A clause is a combination of a subject and a predicate (e.g., she ran; I discovered; he reads). There might be more information added in, such as direct objects, adjectives, adverbs, etc. (e.g., she ran four miles quickly; I discovered Read more…

Parentheses are a great tool you can use to add extra information or commentary to your text. If you want to toss in some examples or clarifications, they’re super handy. Little jokes and sarcastic comments love to be nested inside Read more…

These two abbreviations get mixed up constantly. Most of the time, people use “i.e.” incorrectly when they mean “e.g.” But sometimes it’s the other way around. A big part of the problem is likely that both “i.e.” and “e.g.” are Read more…

Parentheses have all kinds of different functions: In academic papers, you’ll see them used for citations and maybe even in a few mathematical equations. In more casual writing, they’re used to insert extra information or relevant commentary. They’re handy if Read more…